


Guide me Back

by Rogersruinedmylife



Series: Flowers in the Fire [3]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Family Feels, Fighting for life, Human Trafficking, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Physical Abuse, Protective Siblings, Sex Trafficking, Team as Family, Violence, mentions of past and current abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23795020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogersruinedmylife/pseuds/Rogersruinedmylife
Summary: He was so tired.Maybe, just maybe his body was telling him it was time. That he had endured enough. That his suffering was over, and it was finally time to rest. An eternal rest that meant no one could ever hurt him again.God he just wanted to stop hurting.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Ali Martin, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Doug Kendall, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan “Buck” Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: Flowers in the Fire [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687051
Comments: 17
Kudos: 189





	Guide me Back

It had taken half an hour.

Half an hour before anyone wonder why Buck had not come back in from the back garden after Eddie had gone and sat with him.

Ali could recall looking at Eddie as he returned to join them. He had a soft look in his eyes, a gentle smile playing on his lips and his fingers, after placing his empty beer bottle on the counter, had been running over the skin on his opposite wrist.

His brown eyes had locked on her own questioning ones.

His nod subdued the nagging fear that was constantly present in her stomach whenever Buck or Daisy were out of site. The hospital appointed therapist had assured her that was natural. That she had been denied access to the two people that were her strength and comfort for five years, and now that she could see them, it worried her when they were not in her line of sight. It would take time, but she would eventually be able to take time to herself without feeling guilt or worry whenever Buck and Daisy were elsewhere.

The fear had not disappeared with Eddie’s non-verbal reassurance. It was simply simmering under the elation and awe of how welcoming these people were of her little family.

The warmth had reminded her of her last day with her parents. The celebration of their wedding anniversary. The smell of freshly baked cakes and the drying of oil paint as she gifted them a portrait of their wedding photo. She could recall the laughter and tears, the joy and lightness that would be destroyed within her during the next five years.

Waking up in hospital and finding out that they had died, that she truly was never going to see them again had left her wondering if she would ever find a warmth like that again.

She had little but memories over the last five years to hold onto.

After the first year, when she was already near the end of her forced pregnancy, wondering if her child would ever see her face. If she would live past the birth long enough.

It was then that she realised she could not remember much of her own mother’s face.

It had been replaced with the faces of those that had abused her.

Yet here, sitting on Eddie’s couch, her daughter drifting off to sleep against her shoulder, Maddie beside her providing comfort and some familiarity and the knowledge that Buck was just out of sight, she began to believe that maybe she had found it again.

That with the time and patience her therapist was encouraging her to give herself, and with Buck and Daisy, they could forge a place among these firefighters that would give them the home they had only spoke of in whispers while locking pinkie fingers and chained to the floor for the night.

They had planned and wished. Buck making her promise that if it came down to it, that she would take Daisy and run. That she would start her life over with their daughter. Find a home. He had told her about his sister in LA, giving her details only she would know and promising that she would help them.

Ali, fighting with him, demanded that he do the same if something happened to her or he had a chance at escape.

Buck had held her hand that night and swore he would, but she could almost taste the sourness of the lies he was spinning.

Now, now they did not have to worry about what if, only what’s next, and in that moment, Ali felt that maybe life could be beautiful again like it had been that last night with her parents.

As she looked down at her source of strength, dozing and warm in her lap, she brushed a kiss on her daughter’s curls, placing another on the birthmark over her eye in promise. They would have just as many beautiful days as she had with her parents.

Daisy blinked at her tiredly, a laughter and contentedness in her eyes that Ali had never seen in her four short years of life.

‘I think someone is sleepy’, Maddie smiled softly, her own hand raising to tuck a loose curl behind Daisy’s ear as the girl cuddled closer to her mother.

‘Mama’, she mumbled, face pressing into Ali’s neck, ‘Story?’

Ali nodded, cradling her close and she rose from the sofa, Maddie moving her legs to let her make her way to the bedroom Eddie had shown her too earlier to settle her for the night.

As she did, she noticed the officer, Athena, moving out the front door, phone in hand and mummering a soft affirmative.

She hadn’t given it much thought then.

She was too focused on getting Daisy to bed, changing her into the pyjamas that Maddie had bought her niece and picking one of the shorter books Eddie had gifted them to read to her.

Daisy had cuddled into the pillow tiredly, thumb tucked between her limps as sleep overtook her. She had mumbled for her dada, to which Ali had simply pressed a kiss against her daughters’ forehead, assuring her that her dada would be in to say goodnight soon.

She had slipped from the room quietly, leaving the door open a crack and turned to make her way back down the hall when she heard it.

Maddie’s panicked whisper as not to disturb the children.

Eddie having taken Ali’s absence to put Christopher to bed, had frozen in the doorway next to Ali at the words that carried down the hall.

‘He’s not out there!’, her voice was filled with barely contained hysteria, ‘There’s blood, Athena, there’s…there’s blood’.

Half an hour.

She had let Buck out of her sight for half an hour.

She had ignored the fear, the anxiety, and the wrongness of him not following Eddie back through the kitchen and into the warmth of the life they were beginning to piece together.

Half an hour.

Eddie had tried to grab her elbow, to hold her back or comfort her, she didn’t know. She didn’t care to find out.

All Ali knew was that there was a burning need to see him, to see Buck and prove them wrong.

For him to pop in with a scrape or pulled stitch and say sorry, that he had tried to find something to press against his reopened wound and did not mean to scare them.

She pushed passed Maddie, ignoring the tears in her eyes.

She needed to get to Buck.

Her hands were shaking, bile rising in her throat and his name ripping from her chest as if it had been dragged out of her in fear and pain.

She grabbed the frame of door, a wounded noise leaving her as it settled on something wet and sticky.

She didn’t need to look at her hand to know it was covered in Buck’s blood.

Ali felt her knees give out, no sound leaving her as she fell to the ground.

Someone had turned the backlight on, casting the garden in a dim yellow hue.

Beside the bench was the bottle of water she had asked Eddie to take Buck, cap gone and water spilling over the concrete and grass. Splatters of blood graced the wall beside where she had placed her hand, the main patch of blood smudged from her palm.

The gate was broken open, a few more splatters of what looked like blood from a distance on its white coating. The dewy night-time grass was trampled flat in places, all leading towards the back gate with its broken lock, swinging tauntingly in the slight breeze.

And Buck was gone.

Ali tried to breath, to listen to the voice around her as hands touched her, as other officers arrived and began looking around the scene.

At some point Eddie had picked her up, taking her into the living room, allowing an officer to swab the blood on her hand before gently cleaning the remainder off with a warm cloth.

She still could not breathe. This house that had formed an ember of hope inside her chest had just as quickly snuffed it out. Buck was gone. Her security and best friend was gone. Again. Taken from her while she was pretending that they could do this, that two people so broken and forgotten could reclaim safety.

She didn’t think her heart could break any further until the sound of little bare feet on wooden floors cut through the repeating mantra of ‘He’s gone’ in her mind. Small hands cupping her face and greeting the tears she had not even realized were falling.

She gazed into baby blue eye, Buck’s eyes, and her heart broke.

‘Mama, where’s Dada?’

*

Eddie watched helplessly as Ali held her daughter close.

Daisy crying for her dad in broken hiccups, small arms smacking at her mothers’ shoulder as she exhausted herself with tears and protests.

Ali tried to sooth her. Hand stroking calmingly along her child’s back but her eyes were far away. Tears dribbled down her cheeks every few seconds. Brown eyes absently tracking the movement of the officers coming and going from the back garden. Athena standing grimly as she talked in hushed whispers with her Captain at his backdoor.

Evan, no Buck, he had asked him to call him Buck only hours ago and now he was gone.

The sweet, strong young man that had looked at Eddie with hope flickering back to life in his big blue eyes was gone. Taken from his home. The one he had opened to Buck, the one he had promised was safe and held a stability that would allow the younger man to start regaining the life that had been stolen from him.

Their last conversation played on a loop in his head. The broken whisper of ‘what do I do now?’. The soft touch to his wrist. The way he asked him to call him Buck. The softness of his hand in his for that brief second of comfort. The way their eyes had locked, and it had been comfortable. The acceptance and desire to live burning bright in those eyes before he let go and moved away.

And left him alone and vulnerable to whatever had happened next while he was inside sipping beer and listening to his family chat with Ali and Daisy.

While they had been focused on forming bonds, Buck had disappeared in what was looking to be a violent and unpleasant manner.

His eyes tore away for the fractured family in front of him, burning from the empty space to Ali’s right where Buck should be sitting, trying to help console his distraught child.

Athena caught his eye, motioning him over to the kitchen.

Maddie was collapsed in a chair, head in her hands and shoulders trembling as Chimney sat vigil beside her. His own arm wrapped protectively around her shoulder, thumb drawing circles on her arm soothingly. Bobby hoovered behind them, arms crossed and face blank, unsure of what he could do in this moment to help his team.

Eddie took a seat, reaching a hand across to wrap around the older Buckley’s wrist, trying to provide her with some comfort.

‘Eddie, did Evan say anything to you about feeling watched? Or about someone he was afraid of?’, Athena questioned, notebook in hand, watching him cautiously

‘No, we just talked about life’ Eddie sighed, ‘I told him that he had survived, that he had won. I told him to live and he was so…happy. It was like he hadn’t realise he could live now that he was free. He didn’t say anything about being worried about anyone, just that he did not know what to do next. What’s going on Athena?’.

Athena ignored the question for a brief second, focusing on capturing Eddie’s words on paper.

She looked back up before pulling a chair out from the head of the table and taking a seat.

‘The call I got just before Maddie checked for Evan? One of the other survivors was attacked leaving the hospital. They were pretty shaken up, told the officer that responded to the attack that it was the Master, the head guy behind the sex trafficking ring Evan and Ali were forced into’, she paused, throwing an apologetic glance at Maddie before stating softly, ‘They said he demanded to know where Evan was and left when he told him that he didn’t know, that he had gone home with some firefighter from the rescue’.

‘Our station number and footage of Eddie rescuing Evan that day has been all over the news since the fire, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where he was’, Bobby was horrified, settling behind his wife, hand on her shoulder.

Maddie let out a sob, hand moving to cover her mouth and stifle the noises.

‘You’ll never find him’, Ali’s broken, dead voice came from the doorway.

Eddie turned to face her.

The young woman looked destroyed. Daisy was no where in sight. Ali’s arms hanging by her side as if all ounce of joy and fight that she had displayed since Eddie met her outside a burning fire and she yelled at him to find Buck had left her. The defeated posture echoed the empty and hallow look in her eyes as she fixed them on Athena and then Maddie.

‘If the Master took him back then he is rebuilding and Buck will be out of state within days, or he’ll kill him. Nothing Buck ever did could please him and he hated Buck’ she stated coldly, ‘He’d rather see him dead than loose his reputation’.

Silence settled over the kitchen. Maddie’s cries quietening. No one spoke. Each of them feeling the severity of this reality settling over them like a shroud of darkness. It weighed them down. Pressing them into their seats and gluing them to the despair wafting from Ali and Maddie.

‘I won’t give up’, Maddie whispered hoarsely, almost choking on the words, ‘He isn’t gone. He would fight for you and Daisy, he wouldn’t give up, so I am not giving up on him’.

Ali smiled sadly, ‘He won’t fight, because he won’t risk Daisy and he knows that the Master has the means to hurt her, even with police protection. Evan won’t put that little girl in harm, and they’ll do to another girl what they did to me to keep him quiet’

Without another word, Ali disappeared back through the doorway, a ghost of who she had been hours before., leaving them in horrified silence once more

*

He had lost track of days.

Everything was a blur of pain and harsh words and threats as he was hurled from safe house to safe house, brief nights spent on scratchy motel beds with hands clasped over his mouth and money gracing nightstands.

Even now he didn’t know where he was. All he could see where the colourful spots dancing behind his eyelids as he coughed, trying not to be sick. It was always worse when he was sick.

His body ached from abuse. His thighs burning and bruises blooming over the pale skin of his hips. The blindfold over his eyes tied so tight he could feel it leaving friction burns every time he was jostled on the bed. His jaw ached and his head rung from being smacked against the headboard to prevent him from fighting.

Not that he would fight back.

He had said as much that night in Eddie’s garden, gun pressed to his cheek as his head had collided with the wall from the force of the shove. The image of Daisy, so small and innocent, drawing just feet away while this man threatened her again. Threatened to harm her, to take her away from a world she had barely gotten to live in.

He had promised not to fight. The words falling in desperate whispers as steel grey eyes reduced him to a cowering figure against the wall as the blood dribbled down his neck from the collision point against the wall.

He had only laughed lowly, stroking the barrel of the gun along his cheek and down his throat.

‘You were always the weak one Evan’, he had muttered, crazed smirk in place before pulling him forward, wrapping an arm around his throat to drag him from the garden. Buck had closed his eyes, savouring the dying laughter from inside, supressing shudders as he was shoved into a waiting car and taken from the life he had just sworn to live.

He had submitted. It was what cowards did and what Evan Buckley had been beaten down to do.

Submit. Don’t fight back. Close your eyes.

Even now he supressed the shudder, the tears he wanted to let fall.

He lay discarded. A doll that was done being played with. Spread out and forgotten as the sound of clothes rustling and zipper being pulled up filled the quiet around him. He could hear the ruffling of bills, the mummers of voices outside the room as he was left there.

The draft from the door opening and closing crawled over his prone form as he curled onto his side. Ignoring the pain that laced up his spine.

It had become a familiar feeling in the years he had been here.

In the quiet, the moments between such as now, he let himself grieve.

Behind the blindfold, eyes squeezed shut, he could pretend. Pretend he was simply asleep, that the burn was instead the jolt of tiny cold feet being pressed against his back under his shirt like Daisy did in her sleep. Whenever she got cold, she stuck her bare feet up his or Ali’s tops to warm herself.

He could picture her growing up. A beautiful mix of both him and Ali. Her fierceness and his caring nature would make their daughter the most beautiful, outgoing, and loving woman that he knew she was going to be.

Ali would give her a good life. She had Maddie too. Her badass firefighter aunt that would make sure no one could harm her the way he and Ali had been.

He fought the sob, the gasp that wanted to tear from his throat. The voice in his head daring him to fight as the realisation hit again as it did every day.

He would never get to see her again.

He would never see Daisy smile and laugh, arms flung wide as he stepped into a room. Just happy to see him, to see her Dada was there.

He would never hold her again, feel her curls brush his cheek or her heartbeat against his assuring him that she was real.

He would never look in amazement at eyes resembling his filled with wonder and curiosity and love and know she was his. That he had given something good to a world that offered him nothing but pain and grief.

She would grow up with murky memories of a man that looked slightly like her, with pictures and a handful of stories of who her father was.

His daughter would grow to forget his face and voice, how much he loved her.

And that was what broke him.

She would never know how much he loved her.

Even when they were beating him blue, when they choked the breath from his struggling lungs and deprived him of the basic necessities of human survival, he knew he endured it to keep her safe.

She would only know her father had abandoned her.

The tremors grew despite his attempts to stop them. His grief overwhelming and breaking him piece by piece as he lay there. Stray tears wobbled and fell onto the bare mattress beneath him, his breathing pained and gasping.

Then came the hand in his hair.

Not gentle like Ali’s when she tried to sooth the pain away after a bad client. Not the playful pulls of his daughter as she teased her father.

No.

This hand was large and rough. Never showing an ounce of love or affection to anyone, let alone Evan as he was yanked off the bed onto the hard floor. His knees sending shockwaves of pain up his already trembling thighs.

‘Stop being a bitch Evan’, the voice hissed, another hand following the words with a stinging slap to his cheek. The force of it would have jolted his head if the hand wasn’t holding it steady.

He held back his cry of pain as he bit his tongue, the taste of copper replacing the stale, putrid taste lingering in his mouth.

‘I’m sorry, sir’, he replied, barely keeping the whimper from his voice as he did so.

The voice tutted, clicking their tongue before dropping his head. Hand reaching instead to rip the blindfold from his eyes.

His already struggling senses were blinded by the bright cheap light that outfitted the room, blinking away tears before looking up at the steel grey that had stolen everything from him.

That held Daisy’s life in his hands as if she were a tiny fly, a spec he could squash at any moment.

‘You always were my biggest disappointment’, steel eyes sighed, large hand grasping Buck’s chin roughly, squeezing painfully, sure to leave more bruises on pale skin.

Buck could not respond. His sense filled with pain and emotions a vortex of grief and acceptance.

‘You did somewhat well today Evan’, they hummed, regarding the broken form of the young man bare before him, ‘But you are no where near done. You cost me money and men when you managed to convince that client to tip off the authorities Evan. Why couldn’t you just be good and do as Doug told you? I guess he indulged you too often, he was too fond of those blue eyes of yours’.

Anger boiled under his skin and grief. Doug had never been kind. Never indulged him. He had been a shackle from the moment he said ‘I do’ at eighteen. A weight that controlled his every movement during the day. A man who two weeks into their married life had tied his husband down and sold him to the neighbour for a night, then told him it was his fault for looking at other men.

‘But you’ll behave for me, won’t you Evan?’ they smiled, that charming disarming smile that always made officers think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth while Evan bled in another room, ‘Or do I need to go pick up my little bitch of a grandchild to keep you good?’.

Buck shook his head desperately, eyes conveying, screaming that he wasn’t going to fight, he wasn’t going to run.

He was rewarded by the grip on his jaw being dropped, ‘Good. Now go shower. The next client will be here soon’.

Buck rose on shaking legs, stumbling to the cramped bathroom with its door removed from the hinges and window nailed shut.

The cold water of the shower hid his tears.

Doug may have been a weight holding him down.

But Richard Buckley was a monster he would never be free from.

*

The cold metal of the precincts chair dug into her back as she watched the bustling area around her.

Ali couldn’t bring herself to look at Athena’s desk where a picture of Buck, taken in his hospital bed after his rescue, lay staring at her. His bruised face staring at her, almost guilting her for being the one here.

The one who got to live.

‘Sorry about the wait’, Athena appeared, rounding the desk to settle into her chair, ‘No Daisy today? That little girl always makes this place a bit bright’

Ali smiled, hand going to play with the necklace around her neck.

Maddie had taken Daisy out to give her a break from the question. From the tears of a four year old girl whose father had fought to be able to kiss her goodnight even when beaten and bruised. From a four year old that didn’t understand why her Dada wasn’t coming home.

Ali’s heart had broken after the first week when Daisy had looked up at her, not even crying, but voice small and asked, ‘Was I bad and made Dada leave?’.

Ali had held her close, gently telling her that her Dada loved her so much, but a bad man had made him go away, not her, never her.

Daisy had gone with Maddie, a small smile on her face and returned happy. A small box in her hand with a chain with a Daisy on it and looked at her stating, ‘I wanted Mama to smile again’.

Now, sitting before Athena with Buck’s case file and life confined to papers and pictures of a broken man, it provided her with comfort.

‘She has a way of filling every room with sunshine’, Ali smiled watery, ‘She got that from…from Buck’.

Athena offered her a sympathetic look, a fierce resolution in her eyes that made Ali ache.

This woman who barely knew them, who had only met Buck to take statements and for a few hours the night he had disappeared, was determined to bring him back to her.

She did not know whether to cry over the hopelessness she felt or embrace the hope she was offering her.

‘I know this is hard Ali’, Athena sighed, spreading notes across the desk top, ‘And I hate, I hate that I had to ask you here today for what I’m about to go through with you. You deserve more than this station and a missing boyfriend’.

‘Best friend’, Ali corrected, remembering her conversation with Eddie weeks before, ‘We’re not together, but he’s my family’

Athena nodded, clearing her throat. The usually calm and stoic sergeant fiddled with the pen in her hand as she contemplated her next words, almost fearful of what she had to say.

Ali knew. Deep down she knew why she was here.

It had been three weeks since Buck had been taken from her and Daisy. The reality of the situation had sunk in. Searches had been conducted and found nothing. All traces of him disappeared after the little drops of blood leading to spot where a car had to have been parked. All their leads so far had fallen through. The survivor that had been attacked, Joey, had taken his life hours later. Afraid that The Master would come back for him like he had Buck.

Ali had sat with a sketch artist that first week. Described as best as she could from the time, she saw the Master with Doug and Buck. The artist sketch resembled nothing like she had seen and turned no leads.

It had been three weeks and no new evidence was showing up.

Ali may have been confined for five years to small rooms and stained mattresses, but even she knew that they were looking for bodies, and she was here to help.

‘Ali, I hate asking this. And before I do, I want you to understand this does not mean we have given up. Even if it takes years, I plan on bringing him home to you and Daisy, but I have to ask. Can you tell us if Evan had any identifying features besides the birthmark that could be used to identify him in a worst case scenario?’, Athena asked softly and Ali could hear the stress and regret of having to ask her this in her voice.

She swallowed back her tears. God, she had to stop crying, but three weeks later and missing Buck felt like someone had ripped away one of her limbs. She ached to have him back. It was a burn that could not be soothed.

‘He had, um, he had some tattoos that could be used’, Ali tried to stay strong like he would want but the thought of Buck lying dead, body forgotten and decomposed enough that only a few things could identify him.

Athena heard the crack in her voice, her own eyes watering slightly as she watched the tremble run through this young woman’s thin frame. Ali was small but in this moment, sitting in the chair at her desk and surrounded by officers and missing persons posters, she seemed as young and vulnerable as her own daughter and Athena wanted to wrap her in her arms and make the pain go away.

Instead she offered an encouraging smile.

‘He has a small, a small planet on the inside of his elbow’ Ali closed her eyes, trying to picture the few he had, ‘Two black bands going around his arm above the elbow of his right arm’.

She could't keep the shake out her voice, the breaking of her own self as she visualised the last one. The one she had held his hand through while Doug was away, and someone had snuck a needle and ink in. Doug had beaten him until he could not walk for the tattoo. Buck had broken his jaw and a wrist. Doug had told him he deserved it for defacing his property.

He had looked so proudly, adoringly at the tattoo and run his thumb over it every chance he could.

‘He has a…a daisy, just in black in, on his left ankle along with Daisy’s birthdate’, Ali broke, covering her face with her hands as she tried to calm down. To take deep breathes and calm the grief inside her. The ache in her heart that told her she could not do this alone. That Daisy needed her father and she had failed to keep himself.

‘Hey, Ali breathe for me’, Athena spoke gently, having moved to crouch before her. A motherly arm thrown around her, rubbing her arm gently and letting her cry, ‘I know this is hard. I can not imagine what the last few years have been like or what losing Evan is like, but you will get through this. We won’t let you or that little girl get hurt, we won’t let you be alone, you hear me?’.

Ali nodded, wiping her eyes, and offering Athena a watery smile as the woman offered her nothing but support and comfort.

‘Do you want a drink? Water, coffee, tea? You can sit here with me for a while’, Athena offered her a tissue, ‘Maddie is dropping by some more photographs in a few minutes and she can take you back to Eddie and your baby girl’.

‘Tea would be nice, thank you Athena’, Ali covered the older woman’s hand with hers briefly, ‘For everything’.

Athena gave her hand a quick squeeze before disappearing towards a room at the back of the bullpen.

Ali ran her hands through her hair, taking deep breathes to try calm the pain and anger growing inside her with every day that passed.

Her eyes landed on a picture peeking out from underneath the one of Buck in the hospital bed. The corner of his face visible, seeming much younger than the one on top.

She couldn’t stop her fingers from pulling at the photograph, drawn to it automatically. Her brain telling her that maybe he was happy in this picture, that he was smiling, and she could ask Athena for a copy. Something for Daisy to remember her father by, that she could frame and hold close when the pain of his absence grew too much for them both. She tugged it halfway out from the first image.

In the photograph he wasn’t smiling. Buck was clearly in his late teens in the picture. His face tired and gaunt even then, a shadow of fear in his young eyes which were downcast. Doug was beside him, arm tight around his waist. He was gazing at Buck with a sick type of adoration that made Ali sick. She had known they were together when Buck was seventeen and Doug twenty-seven but the difference in age was so clear as baby fat clung to Buck’s cheeks.

Ali ran her thumb over his face, wishing she could somehow go back in time and protect him from the horror that would become.

She tugged at it again, noticing a hand on Buck’s shoulder, a larger older one than Doug’s.

The image before her had her rearing back, out of her chair with a distressed cry on her lips. She couldn’t breathe. All feeling of safety draining from her body and leaving nothing but fear, dread running through her veins and making her heart pound so loudly she could hear it. She wrapped a hand around her stomach, the other clasping her mouth, out of fear or the urge to vomit she couldn’t tell which.

‘Ali? Ali what happened? Did someone hurt you?’, Athena rushed towards the distressed woman, leaving the mugs of tea and coffee on her desk haphazardly.

Ali shook where she stood, unable to speak in fear of getting sick as tears burned her eyes, instead she pointed. Pointed at the face on the desk, the one that haunted her dreams. The only person that had ever truly been able to break Evan Buckley so badly she could not piece him together for years afterwards.

‘Do you know this man, Ali?’, Athena questioned, photograph now in hand pointing to a man with steel grey eyes and stern hold on Buck’s shoulder, fingers digging into the teenager’s skin.

‘It’s him’, she managed to choke out, hands pulling at her hair, at the daisy around her neck. She needed to run, to take Daisy and leave before he came back for her. She knew what he would do. If he had Evan and needed insurance Daisy would be gone before she could even call her name.

Athena moved towards the girl, her questions falling on deaf ears as Ali dissociated, her knees quaking as she slid to the floor.

They had a lead, she thought to herself as she hugged Ali close to her, protecting her from invisible monsters.

They had a lead.

Maddie’s quiet and pained, ‘Why do you have a picture of our father?’, only confirmed her suspicions minutes later when Athena had wrapped Ali in a blanket and gotten her off the ground.

Richard Buckley was a monster.

Unluckily for him, Athena Grant had yet to face a monster she had not brought down.

*

They had moved him again.

Buck knew they were doing it to disorientate him. To keep him from being able to try guess where they were and make a break for it or send a message to someone to try let them know he was here. He was still alive.

Lying on hard concrete, naked and shivering, covered in bruises and cuts, he didn’t know if he even wanted them to find him alive anymore.

Everyday brought new clients. Sicker and more sadistic than the last. His father’s anger knowing no bounds and whereas Doug held some control over the clients, ensuring that his ‘merchandise’ was never damaged, Richard Buckley simply didn’t care.

He would happily watch one of them kill him some day and simply charge them extra for the cost of the clean-up and burial.

Buck tried to move, tried to crawl towards the thread bare blanket thrown in the corner of the room but a hand on his ankle dragged him back across the floor. Stones and concrete grating at his already abused skin, opening wounds old and new, spilling more of his blood on the floor.

He couldn’t help the whimper, the only noise he was capable of making at this point.

He was too bruised and battered to try anything louder than the soft cry. He did not even have enough water in his system to allow himself to cry as his eyes the same unforgiving steel as always.

Richard Buckley simply ran a quick scan over his sons’ body before motioning to the man at the door, signalling to let the next client in to take his turn.

Buck closed his eyes.

He was tired.

He wanted to sleep.

He wanted to die.

A sharp kick to his side caused his back to arch, eyes opening and mouth trying to form a cry of pain that simply could not be sounded from his broken lips and parched throat.

‘I’m leaving to take care of business for a day, maybe too’, Richard stated, crouching to pull Buck’s face towards his, hot stale breath wafting over his cheeks, ‘Nod if you can hear and understand me Evan’.

Buck nodded, trying to swallow painfully. He knew better now than to leave his father’s questions unanswered.

Richard hummed, pleased by the broken man before him.

He stroked an uncharacteristically soft finger across Buck’s cheek before smiling cruelly and pressing his face into the floor, taking pride in how he made no noise, just accepted the pain he dealt him.

‘I brought a friend to play with you. To keep you in line, and he paid extra for the experience Evan’, Richard teased, delivering another kick to his sons’ ribs, ‘Be good Evan’.

He could hear his footsteps leaving the room as the pain radiated through his stomach, his ribs protesting the violent kicks even in the aftermath as he tried to regain his breath.

Breathe that was quickly stolen from him again when a voice echoed in the empty room.

‘Oh Spot, didn’t I warn you that you’d end up back here?’

*

Maddie’s mind was still reeling as she sat in the café Chimney ha taken her too for a late lunch as the evening stretched on outside.

Five days ago she had watched the mother of her niece break down at Athena’s desk. Five days ago she had found out that the head of the sex trafficking ring her brother had been given to hadn’t just been run by his late husband, but was owned by her father.

Richard Buckley had been a hard man. He expected perfection from her at every turn and when she did not fit his mould of a perfect daughter, his hand or belt had made acquaintance with her arms, stomach, the back of her legs. Places where no one would see that esteemed Mr. Buckley, renowned defence attorney, beat his children sensles for anything less than 100% on their school tests.

He had always been crueller to Buck. Her sweet little brother had never stood a chance against him.

It made her stomach turn every time she thought about the fact it was her father, the man that gave them life, that had forced the abuse of someone so beautiful and caring.

He had broken Buck, and now he had taken him once more.

‘Hey, Mads, everything’s paid up’, Chimney spoke softly, as he did often around her now. He treated her like the fragile piece of glass she felt she was. A stone throws away from shattering into thousands of fractals, never to be whole again.

She moved on autopilot, smiling at her boyfriend, allowing him to take her hand as they began to exit the bustling café.

Her words failed her but still she squeezed his hand, lifting it to her lips to place a grateful kiss on his knuckles.

Howie looked at her and she knew he understood. She didn’t need to speak with him. She had found someone who always saw her and understood the words she couldn’t say.

‘Quick stop at the bank before shift?’, Chimney asked, returning the squeeze, and tucking their joint hands into his jacket pocket, offering her a brilliant smile that made her heart flutter.

Maddie knocked her shoulder against his in answer, a small smile pushing its way onto her lips for the first time in weeks.

‘There she is’, Chimney teased, pressing a kiss to her temple as they the crowds of LA brushed against them as they headed towards the bank.

They only separated when they got inside the doors, Chimney pressing a soft kiss to her lips before joining the shortest line for the tellers as Maddie made her way to the small waiting area by the doors.

She automatically reached for her phone, pulling up the google alerts she had set up under her brother’s name, the ones on the trafficking ring and one under his given name, Spot. She lost herself momentarily staring at a picture of him, one of the rare teenager photographs where he was smiling that had been released for the public, his birthmark circled with red.

She clenched the phone, forcing down tears as she exited the alerts.

No news was good news. At least, that is what she tried to convince herself with each passing hour.

‘Madeline?’.

Every fibre of her being froze. A chill setting into her bones at the sound of her father’s voice coming from behind her.

She had imagined this multiple times in the days since the police station. Thought about how she would react. How scared would she be to face someone so evil and vile? The fear, would it paralyse her? Would it take her breathe away and leave her a cowering child just as it had in the past, in the time before Buck when she would cram herself under her bed with the ghouls and ghosts in preference to facing her own father.

No fear settled in with the chill.

A calm overtook her. She knew what she needed to do.

‘Father?’ Maddie smiled demurely, standing straight and prim as he had always instructed her too. She offered him a handshake and was surprised when he returned her smile, pulling her into a gentle hug.

‘It is so good to see you Madeline, oh I missed my little girl’ Richard Buckley took hold of her shoulders, taking her in.

Despite the cheer in his voice, the smile on his lips, those steel grey eyes remained as empty and cruel as ever.

‘I missed you too’, she beamed, her hands steady as she took one of his in hers. Holding him in place, connecting him to the moment, ‘I thought you were in Pennsylvania? If I had known you were visiting, I could have arranged something father’.

Richard Buckley chuckled, free hand running through his straight cut salt and pepper hair, squeezing her hand gently for once in the years she had known him.

‘I didn’t know I would be here myself Madeline, it’s just a quick stop to sort out a problem for a client and return to work. I didn’t think I’d have time to see you, I didn’t want to disappoint you’, he soothed but she could tell that something was wrong.

He kept checking his watch, hand slackening in her grip as if he wanted to pull away but even now, was trying to save is reputation.

She watched, an ugly joy rearing its head in her gut as she watched him make the same nervous gesture that her brother did. He rubbed his thumb off his nose, tongue darting out to run along his bottom lip briefly as sirens sounded in the distance.

She used his distraction, his nerves to tighten her grip on his hand, tugging all six foot of him closer to her smaller frame, ice in her voice as she spoke lowly, ‘Evan is not a problem, and the police are outside Father, so where is he?’.

Richard jerked in her hold, the smile on his face slipping and reveal a nasty snarl, a smirk, and an amusement in his eyes as he turned back to face her.

‘Oh Madeline, you always were slow’ he laughed lowly, leaning forward, breath tickling her ear as he whispered to her, ‘That piece of shit brother of yours is already growing cold in some ditch and you will never, never find his body’.

She moved without thinking.

Once second she was staring in horror as he pulled back to grin at her. A horrible twisted expression that took joy in the pain she knew was playing across her face.

The next her father was stumbling backwards, tripping over a chair in shock as blood dripped from where she had head butted him in the nose, the crunch giving her another sickening thrill of delight as he stared in disbelief at his daughter.

She ignored Chimney’s call of distress, advancing on her father’s prone figure from where he had landed on the floor, clutching his bloodied and broken nose. Her forehead hurt but she relished in the knowledge that she had got him.

‘If Evan is dead, then I am going to make sure you get the death penalty for what you have done to him, to Ali and all the others’, Maddie spoke calmly, standing over him, pulling her phone from her pocket.

She unmuted the call to Athena, ‘Did you record all of that Sergeant Grant?’.

The reply didn’t come from her phone, but instead behind her as Athena walked in cautiously with her partner, gun’s in hand point at Richard.

‘You little bitch’, he hissed, struggling to get up as Athena motioned for her partner to cuff him. No matter how fit and tall her father was, was no challenge for the rookie Detective built like a brick house.

Maddie could feel Chimney’s hands on her shoulders, the press of a cold bottle to her aching forehead but she couldn’t take he eyes off of her father, struggling and in handcuffs.

‘If you don’t let me go, he’ll die Madeline’ he hissed at her, ‘Mackey will kill him and burry his body where you will never find him’.

Athena snorted, stepping between the girl and her father.

‘Maddie must have rattled your brain really good Mr. Buckley because I know the only Mackey in this sick perverted circle of yours is a detestable lawyer for LA and we have permission to ping his phone for location’, Athena smiled at him, grabbing her walky-talky on her shoulder, ‘Sergeant Grant, dispatch get the location of Chase Mackey’s phone, Detective Hall has the warrant and necessary informative’.

Maddie couldn’t stop the laughter as her father was pulled screaming from the bank before they quickly turned to sobs as Chimney pressed soft reassuring kisses against her cheek and temple as she clung to him.

‘You did good Mads, so good’ he hugged her close as Athena reappeared.

‘Go get Bobby, get the team, we’re getting a location and I don’t think you’re going to sit pretty and wait for us to find Evan after taking your father down like that’, Athena smiled, eyeing the forming bruise on Maddie’s forehead, ‘Also remind me never to piss you off girl’.

Laughter erupted from Maddie again, relieved, and hopeful.

Her brother was coming home.

*

‘Shit. Shit. Shit Fuck’ Chase screamed, kicking a folding chair, and sending it crashing to the wall.

Evan lay bleeding on the floor, eyes barely blinking, chest rising slowly.

Richard had been caught. The old man had been taken down by his daughter and now they were coming for him.

He panicked, hands tearing at hair as his brain rushed to find a solution. He could run. He would run. If he wasn’t at the scene then the worst, they had on him was circumstantial and he had enough money to hire Richards firm to defend him against slander.

It was an easy solution.

If he hadn’t left evidence in the newly built but empty housing lot Richard had set up shop in.

His eyes fell on the evidence.

Evan was staring blankly at the ceiling. His body a walking bruise. A canvas of bleeding reds, swirls of blues and purples. He could see bumps where his ribs had broken, from him or from others he didn’t know. The one thing he did know was that his DNA was all over this boy and he wasn’t letting it ruin his career.

His life was worth more than this trash.

The solution was clear as he pulled gloves from his pocket and slid them over his hands.

Evan Buckley had to disappear.

*

Buck could feel himself hit the ground, body rolling from where he had been pushed.

He could feel the cold embrace of water as he was unable to stop his descent, body broken and defeated.

Everything hurt.

Everything burned and ached, and water filled his lungs as he tried to move away.

It hurt, but that meant he was alive.

Chase Mackey was not a smart man on the best of days. A panicked Chase Mackey was even worse. He had muttered about destroying evidence, hiding the body so they could not pin it to him.

Yet he had simply dragged Buck from the house and across the road to the ditch, rolling him down hoping he would slide into the small pond hidden amongst the overgrown weeds and plants. That the water would finish what he had been too cowardly to do.

Buck would laugh if it weren’t for the water in his mouth, making it difficult to breath as he willed his arms to move, to do something. He could feel grass and weeds in his mouth, twigs and branches scraping his naked body was he screamed internally for some part of him to move, to fight.

He was so tired.

Maybe, just maybe his body was telling him it was time. That he had endured enough. That his suffering was over, and it was finally time to rest. An eternal rest that meant no one could ever hurt him again.

God he just wanted to stop hurting.

He let his eyes drift closed, the stinging of the water too much as his body grew heavy, urging him to sleep. To let go, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t let go yet.

He needed to know she was safe.

His Daisy.

He could picture her smile. The way her face lit up every room and her laugh filled him with warmth. The feeling of her tiny fingers, just minutes after was brought into the world kicking and screaming, clasping so tightly around his as she let out a wail that could wake the dead.

He couldn’t leave her.

His arms started to move, hands grasping at silt and muck, dragging his numbing body away from where he had been face down in the water.

His head pulled itself up, icy air filling his lung like a thousand needles at once as he coughed out the water that tried to claim him.

He thought of her as he pulled himself over the rocky shore of the pond.

He thought of Ali as mud forced its way under his fingernails as he clawed his way towards the incline. Ali, fierce and strong, a fire of eternal strength that had guided him thus fair.

He thought of Maddie as his legs screamed in protest as he got to his knees to make the climb easier. His sister who had held him tight and taught him that love didn’t mean pain and harsh words, that it was soft and gentle.

He even thought of Eddie as he slipped backwards due to his wet skin and waning strength. His larger but calm demeaner, the way he had told him he had won and held his hand. The hope he had given him.

He thought of Bobby, Athena, Hen, Chimney and Christopher. People who didn’t know him but had opened their arms and hearts to him as he scrambled towards the ditch and weeds.

He thought of Daisy as his body collapsed, rolling onto his back so he could at least see the stars if it was going to be the last thing he saw.

He thought of how much she loved the night sky and how if he died, he wanted Ali to tell her he was up there, looking down on her.

He thought of her as his eyes closed and his body begged him to rest.

*

‘It’s empty’

Eddie watched as Maddie threw her helmet at the side wall of the house, Athena and Bobby returning from the last house on the newly built lot. Her frustration and desperation clear on his face.

‘He was in there, he was held there but he’s gone’ she shook, Chimney hoovering at her side, hands an inch from touching her but afraid she would explode.

Eddie wanted to help. He wanted to sooth his partner but with each passing minute since they had arrived. Since Athena and her back up had pulled over a speeding Chase Mackey in a car that didn’t have another body in it, finding Buck was becoming more and more hopeless.

He turned his eyes to the scene around him, flashlight in had as he tried to find a clue. Anything that would lead them to finding Evan Buckley alive and reuniting him with his daughter.

Ali’s voice played in his head, her words from when he had called her before Athena got a location urging him forward.

‘Hope is a dangerous thing Eddie; I don’t want to place my heart in it again only to have to tell Daisy her Dada is never coming back to her’.

She had hung up before he could reply. Her words were those of someone who was too used to hope being cruel and twisted.

He wanted to prove her wrong.

He walked to the edge of the property line, away from the flashing lights and the talking, the crackle of walkie talkies as plans were co-ordinated.

If he heard Athena calling for cadaver dogs as Maddie was led back to the ambulance by Hen, he pretended he hadn’t heard a thing.

He swung his light again, searching the ground for disruptions as if he was searching for IUD’s back in the desert. Looking for that little thing that niggled at his mind, telling him something was off when it caught his eyes.

There were drag marks.

‘I think I got something’ Eddie shouted, not stopping to see if anyone had heard him, following the disturbed gravel to the edge of the road where they stopped, but a small trail of blood began.

He was running now, legs going as fast as they could to clear the wide road, eyes fixed on the bushes and weeds on the opposite.

The blood disappeared into them.

‘Buck!’, his throat ached from the shout that tore from his mouth, ‘Evan, are you there?’.

All he could hear were footsteps behind him, Maddie repeating the shouts of her brothers name desperately as they joined the search.

‘Maddie go right, Chim on Maddie, Hen on Eddie go left, Athena and I will take ahead, Bobby yelled orders as Athena gathered her own officers, ‘Chances are Evan is hurt so Tim, John, go get the supplies’.

Eddie was already moving, Hen beside him, moving slowly through the undergrowth and bushes.

Branches pulled at his uniform, thorns catching the skin of his hands not protected by his turn coat but he barely noticed the brief pain as he spotted something that made his heart stop and his stomach drop.

Sticking over the top of the incline, peeking put of the weeds and grass was a foot.

A tattoo of a Daisy and some numbers by the ankle.

‘Hen call for medical’ Eddie spoke quietly, as if his voice was afraid of what they would find as they got closer, ‘I have a body’.

Eddie was raised Catholic but after his tours abroad, unanswered prayers and too much blood on his hands, he had sworn never again to pray.

As he approached what was likely to be the body of Evan Buckley, he started to pray for the first time in years as he used his hands to push away weeds and grass.

Before he could register the horror before him, register the broken naked body of Evan Buckley lying in the dirt, eyes open and fixed unmoving on the sky, he had removed his coat, covering him with it.

Dead or alive, Buck deserved more respect then had been shown to him.

His hands trembled as he placed the coat over him, gathering the strength to check for his pulse as he felt Hen reappear behind him, settling their supplied and joining him on her knees.

His fingertips had barely made contact with the cold skin of Buck’s neck before blue eyes turned towards his, dulled with pain and tiredness, but alive.

Eddie choked back a cry, hand inside going to cradle one of Buck’s bruised cheeks as Hen began to look him over, checking the pulse at his wrist.

‘We have to stop meeting like this handsome’, Eddie teased, taking disinfectant wipes from the kits, and beginning to clean the cuts on Buck’s face.

In the distance he could hear Maddie yelling, bodies running through the tall grass and weeds, the ambulance back towards the road and the sound of Bobby directing Tim and John with the backboard through the grass.

But no sound was sweeter or more heart-breaking as the whisper of the man in front of him as he moved a tired, cold, and wet hand to rest on Eddie’s knee.

‘Hey hot fireman, I won’, Buck whispered, a small smile on his face before he allowed the weight of the world to return to him as tears spilled from his eyes as his sister fell to his side, taking his cold hand in hers.

He had won.

And later that morning, as Eddie watched Daisy, fast asleep for the first time in weeks, tucked against the side of her sleeping father in what was becoming a too familiar hospital room as Ali held his hand tightly between her own, he thought of those words once more.

Evan Buckley had fought with everything he had, earning him broken fingers and ribs, infected cuts, and more bruises than he had skin at this point, but he had won.

And finally, he could rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys,
> 
> I hope you like the update! I tried to work on it as quick as possible to not leave you guys hanging but if update slow it's cause it takes a lot to get the tone of these pieces!
> 
> I love this universe and Im excited to share it with ye
> 
> I hope you like where Bucks journeg is going


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